The present invention relates to a conveyor system for conveying a train of cut veneer sheets supplied in contact with one another to a plurality of conveyors in turn so that they are spaced apart from one another while being carried on any of the conveyors.
In a conventional continuous process in which a large veneer sheet is cut into smaller sheets of a predetermined length by a cutter to form a train of veneer sheets contacting one another which are then stacked one upon the other, it has been necessary, in supplying the train of veneer sheets into the stacking equipment, to provide between any two veneer sheets an interval corresponding to the operation time of the stacking equipment. To describe in more detail, the conventional system requires a plurality of conveyors arranged in tier and a distributor which oscillates between the conveyors to change the path of the sheet so as to distribute the incoming train of cut veneer sheets in contact with each other to each conveyor, thereby forming spaces between the sheets. In this kind of veneer sheet distributing apparatus, however, the distributor has to be switched to the next stage conveyor before the rear end of the veneer sheet is completely on the first conveyor, in order to transfer the front end of the next veneer sheet to the next stage conveyor. Thus, if there is any discrepancy between the timings of the distributor oscillation and the transfer timing of the veneer sheet's front or rear end, the front or rear end of the sheet may be caught between the distributor and the conveyor resulting in a break of the sheet. Moreover, the speed of distribution and conveying depends largely on the timing of the distributor oscillation, so that there a limit to an effort to increase the processing speed. Similar to this equipment is a stacking equipment of the Japanese Patent Application Post Examination Publication No. 56-12485 in which one of a train of cut veneer sheets in contact with each other is held and transferred, by the stick-and-carry conveyor, to the upper one of the conveyors arranged in tier, after which a nail separation bar of the nail removing mechanism guides the front end of the sheet away from the stick-and-carry conveyor in order to release the sheet from the nails thereby transferring sheets onto respective conveyors and providing spaces between the sheets carried on the conveyor. This kind of equipment also has the similar drawback. That is, since as one of the train of cut sheets with no space between them is stuck and transferred to a specified conveyor the separation bar abuts against the sheet and guides it away from the nails, the front or rear end of the sheet is easily broken. Especially with the sheets that have partial cracks, the separation bar abutting against the sheet contributes to enlarge the cracks.